United has announced plans to reduce domestic capacity while increasing international capacity next year. Does anyone know which UA hubs might be most effected. My guess is DEN or IAD. UA is pretty weak on the east coast which is why I think UA might reduce some capacity on the east coast. DEN is a major east/west domestic connecting point so that makes sense to me. SFO is the largest of UA's international gateways and one of the weaker domestic hubs anyway, which leads me to believe that SFO will only get stronger with more international traffic.

World...I'd have to agree. I think that IAD will be effected the most. The domestic feed will have less flights to feed when International build up is somewhere else. In my opinion the build up will be from ORD. Below are my thoughts.
1) SFO gets much stronger with more Int'l traffic and a few added flights to feed them.
2) ORD will get more Int'l flights. UA will drop domestic to get in agreement with the ORD slot restrictions.
3) IAD will lose some domestic feed if more IT flights are going out of ORD.
4) DEN will go unchanged

I agree with you 100%. I expect UA to cut flights at ORD due to "voluntary flight reductions", but add larger planes to keep capacity ahead of AAs. But given UAs management, who knows what they will do.

UA will drop domestic to get in agreement with the ORD slot restrictions.
I wasn't aware that ORD was slot controlled. When did that happen?

I think that what happens at IAD will at least partially depend on US' future. I imagine that if the merger had gone through, IAD would have been dropped as a hub in favor of PHL and (to a lessor extent) CLT. The idea of the US/UA partnership is still that the east coast is US' domain, however. Thus, I see some downsizing at IAD if US sticks around. If US liquidates, I think we could see a lot (I use this term really loosely) of growth at IAD. WAS is a huge O&D market, and northern Virginia is growing at a pretty good clip. MWAA is improving the facilities, and connecting at IAD is still, IMHO, much easier than at ORD (especially if there is an international flight involved).

ORD is not slot restricted per se but is on a restriction. I use the words slot restiction not in the term you are thinking. We here at A.net have been through this enough, most know what each other mean. UA/AA are both reducing the their flights per the FAA request. This is a perfect excuse to drop there amount of domestic flights and use larger a/c.

Ya what about LAX? Is it considered a hub or a focus city as UA has a big presence here? And I believe that AA will one day in the future operate LAX-ORD on a 777 just to compete with UA. What are your opinions?

SFO is very strong internationally with international connections to both the Pacific and Europe for UA. Domestic traffic is much weaker than DEN or ORD as it seems as though most of the domestic traffic for UA at SFO is either O&D or feeder traffic for the international flights.

What about DEN? DEN is the weakest hub for international connections with no flights to Europe or Asia. It is almost entirely an east/west connection point for domestic traffic. Does anyone see any reductions there?

As DEN is UA's most profitable hub, I have reason to believe that would be the LAST place UA would want to make cuts. I agree that at IAD and ORD, domestic flights will be swapped for more international. I think UA is trying to build up IAD as a strong international gateway, at least they should.

I don't think UA downsize too much. Their press release used the term decrease capacity. So I hope that the amount of flights stays the same and that only some mainline routes are replaced by regional jets.

DEN is the weakest hub for international connections with no flights to Europe or Asia.

DEN has a FRA-flight, albeit operated by Lufthansa, but codeshared on by United, and UA/LH offer quite a bit of connections between Europe and the Western United States through this FRA-DEN flight.

Regarding the original topic, the hub that has undoubtedly suffered the most is MIA, as it is no longer a hub. And what's the status of JFK? Hasn't UA been reducing its presence there over the past coupe of years. Or is JFK just a focus city?

I vouch against the idea of UA's closign the IAD hub. That would leave them with ORD as the first point of entry in the US for most of its European flights, and ORD is just too far out of the way for those East Coast bount passengers.

Well MIA has been basically killed off. Despite the large reduction in the 737 fleet as 735 & 733 aircraft are returned off lease,i'd imagine many of those routes will be replaced by E170 aircraft operated by Republic. So,capacity will be reduced but frequency can be maintained,or thats what I see happening.

If US enters C7,that would provide UA with huge potential revenue & passenger increase down the east coast,though I really hope US can pull through these difficult times.

UA has already closed the MIA hub. Do not expect more cuts from them. There is a lingering though of increasing Ted service but I will have to see it to belive it. If it wasn't for $55/barrel oil prices UAL Inc. would be profitable by now. The airline has been showing operational profit (a small one I might add) for the last few months.

I wouldn't classify MIA as a hub and, afaik, UA never did either. Keeping MIA open was stupid. Toward the end, most connecting pax who wanted to go to EZE or GRU would have had to double connect anyway (MSP-ORD-MIA-GRU or some such), so shifting those flights to ORD and IAD saved money because it allowed the closing of a base and also made more sense for pax... a win-win situation.

UA's domestic downsizing is a minimal 3% after UAX makes up for the rest of the cuts. It won't have much effect on any hub unless, of course, you are an employee.

STT757;

CO is contractually obligated to honor their marketing agreement with NW until 2025. The only way to get around this agreement, other than buying it out, is to file for bankruptcy. Either way, it certainly is NOT in CO's financial interest to partner with UA.

"To he who only has a hammer in his toolbelt, every problem looks like a nail."